Staff Pick

Somewhere along the way to guru-dom, Malcolm Gladwell got tagged as a business writer. Fair enough — The Tipping Point speaks more powerfully to the principles of succesful marketing than any pedestrian semester in the classroom. But while raves from Fortune, Business Week, and Management Today fortified his coronation on corporate campuses worldwide, how many business books also garner similar praise from Us magazine?

In The Tipping Point, the author set out to describe how ideas, products, messages, and behaviors travel through culture. In Blink, his follow-up, he considers how effective decisions are made. "I like looking at things that we take for granted," Gladwell explained during a visit to Powell's. "I'm not interested in the exotic. Neither of these books is about the exotic."

Nor is either strictly about business. Graffiti on subway cars, children's television programming, lovelorn suicides in Micronesia, facial expressions, symphony orchestras, indicators of a successful marriage; Gladwell's appeal can be traced directly to his studied obsession with familiar objects and events, and his remarkable talent for synthesizing complicated ideas into compelling stories. Recommended by Dave, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.

This bestselling book, in which Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Review:

"A terrifically rewarding read." Seattle Times

Review:

"As a business how-to, The Tipping Point is truly superior, brimming with new theories on the science of manipulation." Time Out

Review:

"Gladwell has a knack for rendering complex theories in clear, elegant prose, and he makes a charismatic tour guide." San Francisco Chronicle

Review:

"[A] lively, timely and engaging study of fads....Gladwell...has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; The Tipping Point is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world." Alan Wolfe, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"[A] fascinating account...valuable..." Chicago Tribune

Review:

"A wonderful page-turner about a wonderfully offbeat study of that little-understood phenomenon, the social epidemic." Daily Telegraph (London)

Review:

"While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets...this volume betrays its roots as a series of articles for The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"It's hard not to be persuaded by Gladwell's thesis. Not only does he assemble a fascinating mix of facts in support of his theory...but he also manages to weave everything into a cohesive explanation of human behavior....There's little doubt that the material will keep you awake." Business Week

Review:

"The Tipping Point assembles talking points from childhood development, marketing, and social epidemiology, and holds them up at an angle that lets one distant notion attach to another....An ingenious guide." Richard Lacayo, Time

Review:

"The thrust of Gladwell's book is that seemingly small gestures can have fantastically large and rapid outcomes....The Tipping Point could well prove to be an influential text for political activists." Timothy Noah, Washington Monthly

Review:

"An elegant exploration of how social epidemics work, whether they are fashion trends, diseases, or behavior patterns such as crime." Deidre Donahue, USA Today

Synopsis:

This celebrated New York Times bestseller — now poised to reach an even wider audience in paperback — is a book that is changing the way Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

About the Author

Table of Contents

Introduction 3 1 The Three Rules of Epidemics 15 2 The Law of the Few: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen 30 3 The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, and the Educational Virus 89 4 The Power of Context (Part One): Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime 133 5 The Power of Context (Part Two): The Magic Number One Hundred and Fifty 169 6 Case Study: Rumors, Sneakers, and the Power of Translation 193 7 Case Study: Suicide, Smoking, and the Search for the Unsticky Cigarette 216 8 Conclusion: Focus, Test, and Believe 253 Endnotes 260 Acknowledgments 271 Index 273

What Our Readers Are Saying

Average customer rating based on 2 comments:

Taylor, July 11, 2008 (view all comments by Taylor)
The Tipping Point offers an intriguing perspective on how buying trends, social trends, and other patterns of behavior occur as a result of a few people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. I think the author supports his claim really well with the data he draws on. I found the book intriguing because the author makes the concepts easy to follow and shows how societal trends are shaped by just a few people who help tip the rest of us to what those trends are.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No(9 of 17 readers found this comment helpful)

ERoberts, January 28, 2007 (view all comments by ERoberts)
The title says it all: "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." I can remember many times when one person has done one thing that was "new" or "different" and it spread like wildfire. This book really helps explain why and how this happens.

I highly recommend it!

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No(16 of 26 readers found this comment helpful)

Somewhere along the way to guru-dom, Malcolm Gladwell got tagged as a business writer. Fair enough — The Tipping Point speaks more powerfully to the principles of succesful marketing than any pedestrian semester in the classroom. But while raves from Fortune, Business Week, and Management Today fortified his coronation on corporate campuses worldwide, how many business books also garner similar praise from Us magazine?

In The Tipping Point, the author set out to describe how ideas, products, messages, and behaviors travel through culture. In Blink, his follow-up, he considers how effective decisions are made. "I like looking at things that we take for granted," Gladwell explained during a visit to Powell's. "I'm not interested in the exotic. Neither of these books is about the exotic."

Nor is either strictly about business. Graffiti on subway cars, children's television programming, lovelorn suicides in Micronesia, facial expressions, symphony orchestras, indicators of a successful marriage; Gladwell's appeal can be traced directly to his studied obsession with familiar objects and events, and his remarkable talent for synthesizing complicated ideas into compelling stories.

by Dave

"Review"
by Seattle Times,
"A terrifically rewarding read."

"Review"
by Time Out,
"As a business how-to, The Tipping Point is truly superior, brimming with new theories on the science of manipulation."

"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"Gladwell has a knack for rendering complex theories in clear, elegant prose, and he makes a charismatic tour guide."

"Review"
by Alan Wolfe, The New York Times Book Review,
"[A] lively, timely and engaging study of fads....Gladwell...has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; The Tipping Point is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world."

"Review"
by Chicago Tribune,
"[A] fascinating account...valuable..."

"Review"
by Daily Telegraph (London),
"A wonderful page-turner about a wonderfully offbeat study of that little-understood phenomenon, the social epidemic."

"Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets...this volume betrays its roots as a series of articles for The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form."

"Review"
by Business Week,
"It's hard not to be persuaded by Gladwell's thesis. Not only does he assemble a fascinating mix of facts in support of his theory...but he also manages to weave everything into a cohesive explanation of human behavior....There's little doubt that the material will keep you awake."

"Review"
by Richard Lacayo, Time,
"The Tipping Point assembles talking points from childhood development, marketing, and social epidemiology, and holds them up at an angle that lets one distant notion attach to another....An ingenious guide."

"Review"
by Timothy Noah, Washington Monthly,
"The thrust of Gladwell's book is that seemingly small gestures can have fantastically large and rapid outcomes....The Tipping Point could well prove to be an influential text for political activists."

"Review"
by Deidre Donahue, USA Today,
"An elegant exploration of how social epidemics work, whether they are fashion trends, diseases, or behavior patterns such as crime."

"Synopsis"
by Libri,
This celebrated New York Times bestseller — now poised to reach an even wider audience in paperback — is a book that is changing the way Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and gifts — here at Powells.com.